(first posted 11/22/2011) The question of when exactly GM first started committing its many Deadly Sins is subject to debate, although I did make a stab at at it once. But it mostly all boils down to hubris, the arrogance and over-confidence that so commonly afflicts those at the top. And was GM ever on top. In 1962, about the time the program leading to the Toronado was approved, GM’s US market share was 52%. The divisions all had their own engineering departments, with plenty of money to burn on all sorts of sexy fun projects that might have gotten their start over the water cooler: Hey! How about we build a gigantic seven-liter high-performance personal luxury coupe with front wheel drive? Yes! Brilliant! It’s just what the world was waiting for. Not.

Now GM’s Best and Brightest had been mentally playing around with the idea of fwd for quite a while. It was kind of like kinky sex; highly attractive to think about, especially compared to engineering another plain vanilla sedan with a frame and a conventional drive train like all the others in the past fifty years.

Who can blame them? Coming out of WW2, GM was boldly going to redefine modern motoring, and fwd seemed like it just ought to be part of it. Actually doing it, and for the right reasons, was another story. Like this La Salle II roadster, of 1955: it “had” fwd, but it just wasn’t functional. Hey, just a minor detail. It’s a show car; you don’t get to actually drive them anymore than you get to be intimate with show car girls. GM’s fwd mental masturbation was in overdrive, and on a roadster no less, although just how sexy the LaSalle really was is as questionable as its pretend fwd.

1955 was also the year Citroen’s fwd DS arrived. Compare the DS with the Le Salle above it. Which was the more forward-looking car? Oops, wrong subject; we were talking about sex. Oops again. Maybe it was something about the American idea of sex in the 1950s?

OK; let’s give them a break. The Big Three’s Engineering and Design mavens deserved to let their inhibitions run loose a bit during this period. During the fifties and sixties, they were on top of the world. All too soon, they would be busy scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make engines run cleaner and more efficiently while still running at all, barely. The engineering challenges of the seventies and early eighties were like the AIDS epidemic, and soon enough even plain-vanilla engineering sex went the way of safe sex. But in those last years before the EPA and CAFE-branded condoms were handed out, The GM Engineers went on an orgy.

Every permutation of engine and transmission positions were tried out: rear-engined Corvair, rear-transaxle Tempest, mid engined Corvair and Corvette prototypes, rotary engined Corvettes, electric engined Corvairs, and a very kinky fwd van concept, the L’Universelle (above), with a roof intake for the mid-mounted radiator. Yeah; that’ll work well, especially in the winter. And that’s just that’s the short list. Ironically, the one thing that wasn’t on the list, even the long one, was a fwd small car. As in, where fwd would actually have made the greatest difference in terms of space utilization, weight savings, and other benefits.

Admittedly, Olds did have a fwd program for the 1961 F-85. With a 112″ wheelbase, the F-85 was already closer to a mid-size car than compact, let alone a true small car. And the program got a late start, and didn’t get all that far. Probably a good thing, as there were enough issues with the Buick/Olds’ aluminum V8 that resulted in it being ditched after three years. One less future Deadly Sin.

GM wasn’t playing the fwd game alone. Ford too was also indulging fwd fantasies, one of which was along the lines of the Toronado, turning the ’61 T-Bird into a front-driver. But Ford also put their forward-thrust energies into something eminently more suitable: the Ford Cardinal small car. Designed in the late fifties as a true VW competitor, it had perhaps the most compact engine ever built, a 60 degree V4, with a balance shaft to minimize vibrations, and sitting just ahead of the front transaxle. This very forward-thinking approach might have been expected out of Lancia, or? But it was conceived and developed in Dearborn, and came within a cat’s whisker of being built.

When it became obvious that the highly vanilla 1960 Falcon could be built as cheaply as the Cardinal, Ford pulled out at the last minute, crated it up, and sent it to Germany, where it appeared in 1962 as the Ford Taunus 12M (above). Thanks to the space-saving advantages of fwd, the 12M was shockingly roomy for its class at the time, and was a much more substantial and better riding car than the tinny, bouncy and narrow RWD Opel Kadett A. The Cologne V4 was eventually adopted by Saab, and spawned two more cylinders to become the basis for the engine that powered millions of Explorers, in its triumphant return to America. In an SUV. Who could have foreseen that?

Let’s forget about what could have been (a fwd Pinto with a very roomy body?) and get back to Dr. Feelgood Oldsmobile. Having lost the competition that led to the 1963 Riviera, Olds was given the green light to join the party for the second generation of the E-Body for 1966. Designer Dave North’s rendering for a smaller specialty car, the “Flame Red Car” was chosen, a RWD mid-sized sporty coupe concept designed to compete against cars like Pontiac’s GTO. So it had to be scaled up to the E-Body size, as a larger volume was desired for that body.

There’s no question it was a dramatic and bold statement, and a rather groundbreaking one, especially in the continuity of the rear quarter into the sweeping C-pillar and roof. I was very impressed at the time; this really hadn’t been done before. But Americans never took a shine to it, and sales were disappointing. And Olds soon dumbed down the design progressively, until in 1971, it looked like a cut-rate Eldorado.

The blade front fenders weren’t exactly original, owing a debt to the 1961 Continental. And the horizontal bars in the front grille undoubtedly were meant to invoke that last great attempt at an American car fwd, the Cord 810. It would be easy to say that the Toronado was essentially a modern take on the Cord, right down to the forward thrusting fenders, hidden headlights and even the shape of wheel’s brake-cooling cutouts. So let’s stick to the harder stuff.

Like the Toronado’s very long front hood. I don’t know the exact measurement in inches, but undoubtedly it was the biggest to date. A very manly car indeed. And it spawned a whole race for ever longer front ends. All thanks to the space-saving miracle of front wheel drive!

There’s no question that the Unitized Power Package (UPP) that the Olds engineers finally arrived at was successful in executing its intended mission. The brand new THM 400 three-speed transmission was split into two, and the “Hy-V0” chain transmitted power from the back of the torque converter to the rest of the now-dubbed THM 425 transmission. Final drive was via two equal-length half shafts, the right one passing under the engine’s oil pan.

This meant that the 385 (gross) hp 425 cubic inch (7 liter) Olds V8 had to sit unnaturally high in the engine bay, necessitating a very low intake manifold and drop-down air cleaner, as the valve covers were only a very short distance below that massive hood. This undoubtedly didn’t help the center of gravity. Never mind that the Toronado carried over 60% of its weight on the front wheels. Welcome to the future! At least the UPP turned out to be a reliable unit. And found its true calling in a motorhome.

So let’s focus on the Toronado’s presumed advantages. Yes, traction in snow was improved. And Olds managed to make the handling of the Toronado decent enough, but given the standards of 1966, that wasn’t exactly Rocket science. Anyway, a comparable rwd Riviera GS was the better handling of the two. Turns out there is a reason why high-buck high-performance cars, especially sporty coupes are almost exclusively rear wheel drive.

And then there’s the most important Toronado advantage of all: a flat front floor! Yes, that was the critical advantage in a high-buck personal luxury coupe, because we all know that the drivers of these cars inevitably had two additional passengers in the front seat to share it with. That’s why they’re called “personal luxury coupes”. And why bucket seats and consoles were practically invented for them. For what it’s worth, the Toronado was the best car ever to take to the drive-in, if you could get your hands on Dad’s. Which wasn’t too likely.

Sadly, benefits often come with a price to pay. And the Toronado extracted its. It weighed some two hundred pounds more than the otherwise similar but rwd Riviera. Oops. The bias-ply front rubber wore out quickly from all the combined forces placed on them. Never mind that Citroen fwd cars had been riding on steel-belted Michelin radials since 1948.

But the biggest flaw was the Toronado’s braking ability, or the lack thereof. The fact that Olds sent the Toronado out in the world with drum brakes is almost mind-boggling. Given that it weighed almost two and a half tons, and with its intrinsic front-weight bias, the front drums were quickly overwhelmed, fins and all. But that’s only half the story; the rear drums locked up all-too easy, as GM made the same blunder it repeated with the fwd X cars: no height-sensitive brake proportioning valve to reduce rear brake pressure when the rear end started rising during barking.

Optional (!) front discs arrived in 1967. But there is simply no reason as to why the Toronado didn’t come standard with discs and a height-sensing rear axle proportioning valve in 1966. By this time four wheel discs were becoming common in Europe. The lowly Fiat 124 sedan and Renault 10 both had standard four wheel discs.

OK, it’s easy to criticize. What should Olds have done instead? How about the goal of perfect weight distribution and better ride and handling (other than freeways)? Take up what John DeLorean started with the 1961 Tempest, but use the THM 400 in a rear transaxle, and a proper independent rear suspension. Now that would have been forward looking, and still allow an essentially flat floor for those three-way front-seat hookups.

Or let’s kick it up a notch. In 1967, the tiny firm of Jensen introduced the Interceptor FF, with the world’s first full-time all-wheel drive system AND anti-block braking (with four wheel discs). Hello GM! It’s not 1955 anymore. Front wheel drive wasn’t exactly the latest and hottest thing, except for where it belonged, on small cars.

If the Toronado had beat the Jensen FF by one year with its list of leading-edge attributes, this could have been a GM Greatest Hit. Instead, the Toronado’s fwd as well as its sexy styling quickly became passe, and within a few years, its owners probably didn’t even know which wheels to put the snow chains on. But fear not; all that effort wasn’t wasted, as the hundreds of million spent on the Toronado’s fwd technology was soon put to good use in that highly space-efficient and practical import killer, the fwd Vega. In our un-sexy dreams.

(author’s note: GM’s Deadly Sins are numbered by when they were written, not in order of their heinousness or when they were committed. Also, in case it isn’t clear, a Deadly Sins label doesn’t mean the resulting cars were necessarily bad per se. It may be as much or more a reflection of the decision making process that resulted in them being built. Yes, the ’66 Toronado is a sexy beast, but neither relevant nor properly developed)

148 Comments

To me, it seems like none of the design elements really mesh on the first gen Toro. It’s one of those cars I just can’t find attractive or fully understand.
At least we got the UPP from it’s development. That made for a decent RV.

Good grief! Why the devil didn’t he just pick a Riviera then?
That’s simply an atrocious fate for a car that deserves far better.

Personally, I have no desire for a Toronado, though I do admire them and as a Revcon owner am very glad they built the UPP. Mine sat for over 20 years after accruing only 60k miles. Starter fluid and a jump and it runs and drives. Of course fuel tank rehabilitaion, electrical systems, and rubber parts have all been issues but the 455+Turbo 425 is practically bullet proof and perfectly suited for powering this motorhome. They actually used the whole front subframe for the Revcon front end. In effect it’s the front half of a Toronado pulling an Airstream. In fact the designer, John Hall, was the stepson of the creator of the Airstream. It’s quite an interesting story, but I’m no writer so I’ll stop going on about it now. 🙂

It’s because of the links you embedded. Our spam filter thinks it might be…spam! It seems to happen if you embed more than one link per comment. I try to check the “Pending” pen as often as possible, but sometimes I’m not here.

Btrig

Posted November 23, 2011 at 3:18 PM

That makes sense. Well, I guess I’d rather wait for my comment to post than have to sift through a bunch of spam links to find the real comments.

Hi, I was just doing some research on the Revcon Motorhome, and stumbled across your post. A Revcon owner and I are quite possibly working on a deal for a trade. Hopefully it goes my way and I become an owner of a 1980 Revcon motorhome. Any insight you can email me would be great.

Leno said the Olds was a basket case when he got it. He liked the style of the car but wanted it set up as a rear-drive monster performer. He didn’t defile a car that was original or even in restorable shape.

Thanks for giving us a different perspective on this car! I always liked the Toronado, but, in the end, the front-wheel-drive application seems wasted here, as you noted.

From what I’ve read, GM believed that buyers of personal luxury coupes would be more likely to pay more for front-wheel-drive, and also be more likely to buy something “different.” That still drove up costs, so it also resulted in some odd equipment choices, such as a rather plain interior for the price point, and no disc brakes for the first year. GM would repeat this with the Eldorado in 1967, as only the front bucket seats were upholstered in leather, if I recall correctly, and disc brakes were initially optional.

If I recall correctly, GM was also reluctant to make front-wheel-drive available in sedans because it feared the impact that such a car would have on the sales of the contemporary full-size and intermediate cars, which were very profitable and relatively inexpensive to produce.

In the end, GM was forced to take that route, and make a whole lot of compromises and short cuts along the way, resulting in much grief for customers and the corporation itself in the 1980s.

One important point in the Toronado’s defense – Oldsmobile was really adrift in the early 1960s, best exemplified by its confusion over the names for its full-size cars (it had a Jetstar I and Jetstar 88 in the line-up for 1964, and they were aimed at completely different sets of customers!). The Toronado seemed to refocus the division, and garnered favorable publicity for Oldsmobile, which had been completely overshadowed by Pontiac in the early 1960s. The Toronado helped Oldsmobile recapture some of its reputation for innovation.

As the 1960s wore on, Oldsmobile found its groove with a refined Cutlass line-up and the Delta 88. The Toronado helped jump-start that process.

My uncle owned an Olds Toronado… don’t remember anything bad about it… it just seemed like a typical big car, at the time. However, I DO remember reading about backyard mechanics using the Toronado power units to create midengined specials… Oh, as an aside: “run cleaner and more efficient” should say “run cleaner and more EFFICIENTLY” (an adjective modifying a verb)… Sorry, but sometimes my 7th grade teacher pops up in my brain and yells “Nooooooo!” at some of the grammar used in CC.

The Toronado appears to have been a matter of the division bowing to the reticence of the corporation. Even after the FWD senior compact program was tabled, Olds wanted to do a FWD Eighty-Eight, which would have made a lot more sense. (For a big family car, a flat floor and better winter traction would have been definite pluses, and it wasn’t like anybody was expecting large American sedans to have agile handling in those days.) Corporate management was skeptical about that, apparently as much on practical grounds as for cost reasons, so it ended up in the E-body instead, where it could have a higher price point.

For that matter, neither Oldsmobile nor Bill Mitchell had wanted the Toronado to be a big car. Mitchell lobbied hard for it to be A-body-based, but again the corporation insisted it needed to share the next E-body shell. And putting that together with FWD was, again, an afterthought. What’s the old line about a horse designed by committee?

Poor Bill Mitchell lost that fight for the boat-tailed Buick Riviera in 1971 as well. I agree that they both would have been better cars on the A-body. Nevertheless, since Cadillac was going to ‘steel’/use this fwd architecture for its 1967 El Dorado they all were saddled on a variant of the full size B-body instead. At least Riviera did not go fwd for many years.

General Motors, has for far too long, been at the mercy of accountants and not car guys… This is why ‘new’ Camaro rides on a family sedan chassis (Holden’s Commodore/Pontiac G8) instead of being a ‘clean sheet’ design it probably deserved.

The ’66-’70 Riviera, Eldorado, and Toronado were big, but they weren’t based on the B- or C-body. (The Riviera’s frame was still at least loosely based on the cruciform chassis previously used by big Buicks, but the Toronado and Eldorado’s were not related to anything but one another.) Cadillac DID explore putting the ’67 Eldorado on a C-body platform — GM’s archives supplied some photos of it, which make clear that it had a dramatically longer wheelbase — but they didn’t end up going that way.

I was never able to find a definitive answer as to how interested Cadillac actually was in FWD. They had played with it a little before Oldsmobile’s FWD senior compact, but it didn’t seem like it went anywhere, and it may have just been an experimental program. According to some Olds people, Cadillac didn’t consider it viable. However, the corporation wanted to share the UPP across several divisions to help pay off its development costs, so I tend to suspect that senior management insisted. (The Riviera was supposed to have it, too, but Buick successfully lobbied against it.)

In any case, a lot of the mechanical package ended up being jointly developed, so it wasn’t like Cadillac just stole Oldsmobile’s engineering. And some of the Cadillac stylists said that even a few of the production Toronado’s styling cues (the broadly flared wheel arches, in particular) actually came out of the Cadillac studio, rather than the other way around.

The new Camaro is based on the recent as of 2013 Alpha platform which is only used by the Cadillac ATS and CTS which really are not family sedans but luxury sports niche cars. The G8 was on the older Zeta platform. Most car companies share platforms these days and have for years. It would make little fiscal sense to develop all these “clean sheet’ designs for just one car such as the new Camaro. Judging by the weight loss and cleaned up driving dynamics I would say they did it mostly right!

yes, rear is cut off and thus the advantage of a front wheel drive car 🙂 The “trailer” is bolted ot the front of the car, allows up and down pivoting but no side to side. The power steering pump on the car drives the hydraulic rams that raises the cradle on the trailer, thus lifting the float plane.

Edit: made a mistake, the Golf/Rabbit tug (pic below) has the trailer pivot at the car. The Toronado does not have the same set up.

I’ve always really liked the looks of the Toronado (yes, grandiose by modern standards, but still striking), but the “because we can” FWD drivetrain is definitely a drawback. Another example of how GM has frequently been a mix of demonstration projects not many people can or will buy, and mediocre cars that are cheap to buy but don’t impress and don’t last.

That was good; and bad. It was good that such a laborious, expensive project as this one could be done as an engineering exercise; and frankly, a good one from a technical viewpoint.

The bad…was that the company lacked FOCUS. They come out with a concept like this one; and the managers are all in a hubbub; they want it big, with a long hood and 5000 pounds of bulk.

Well…okay. Are they a big-car company? A cutting-edge engineering company? What?

They didn’t know. And lacking clarity, they experienced drift. So FWD was packaged in a vehicle where it would offer no advantage in use; and then not even SOLD as HAVING it!

This, the “focus thing,” was, I thought, the idea behind keeping the GM divisions, divisions. Different companies within the corporation; different missions. And the more they strayed from that…the more were the Deadly Sins.

GM has for the clear majority of it’s history tried to be everything to everybody except when they thought it was “hard” to do. FWD small car? Ugh, that’s hard… we’ll never make any money… besides we’ve got 50% of the market anyway, we sell everything we build… 20 years later… Japanese car fighter? Ugh… that’s hard. Let’s just get Toyota to go into a partnership with us and we’ll steal their secrets… the Toyota Production System has to be some sort of black magic we can just borrow…

When you look at the money we were making then, gas was too expensive to throw away even in 1966. A lieutenant on my sub had one of these while I was enjoying the new car smell of a 1966 VW. I thought the money for gas was obscene and in New London (typical new england streets and parking spaces) it was hard to jockey into small places. That excluded the alley behind Ernies bar and a few other other important spaces. It was about as useful to me as most of the late 50’s thru mid 60’s land barges would have been.

In other words I didn’t like it. The only thing it had that I envied with my bug was a big back seat that you could sleep in, or whatever. I’m sure it was perfect for somebody. Just not me.

Honestly I love the Tornado and Eldorado of this era (actually I love the Eldorado right up until the 4.1V8 was dropped in it, and I love the Tornado until the V8 models were cancelled.) To me the only sin was not putting disc brakes on these suckers and not taking what they learned from the project and applying it to something else. Imagine the Vega/Chevette with the FWD Iron Duke and Hyrdomatic 125 from the X-body/Celebrity project. That wold have seemed like a more compeditive small car and the traction advantage would have been appreciated.

BTW, I think the thing shown right after the citroen that looks like a corvair front with a 55 chev back could have fit right in with the world of sedan delivery vehicles. Low, and if it wasn’t too long it looks very manuverable.

Olds had some good cars. I owned a 1950 and loved it. This one, however, was just way too much. I’m sure it wa better than the Olds Starfire I owned about a decade later. It’s embarassing to have an engine fire in heavy traffic.

All the disadvantages of a COE (cab over engine) layout with a huge reduction in space efficiency due to the engine being behind the seat not under it – neither Arthur nor Martha. It might have worked in the mid 50’s until other layouts improved on it

I had to look for a diagram of the A100 but the engine looks to be further forward than the L’Universelle, partly between the seats. Overall I would say right idea, wrong time, as they thought at the time with the move to the front-engined vans.

I remember flying in a new Toro from Moorhead/Fargo to the U of M Minneapolis around 1976. It was mid winter with occasional snow drifts across the freeway. We just blasted through the drifts, they sort of exploded, but the Toro just marched right on!

As a luxury car in the Great White North I thought it made perfect sense. I also remember more Saabs in Minnesota than Toyotas back then.

“Contemporary road tests showed that the big Tornado could go from zero to 60 mph in the range of 8.2 seconds. Add the fact that you sit comfortably behind the aircraft-inspired steering wheel, along with five of your generously proportioned friends, and the Toronado’s true place in performance history is almost unmatched.” Six-way seats?

The original Toro didn’t get nor need a proportioning valve since it was all drum brakes. The reason for a proportioning valve is the fact that a duo servo drum brake is self energizing so it’s braking force is not linear to the pressure applied while disc brakes have a linear response. The failure had to have been in balancing the wheel cyl and swept area sizes front to rear.

Can’t say I’ve ever looked that close at an FWD X body braking system but unless they did something strange and didn’t use the same Delco-Remy combination valve, like the rest of the GM, IH, AMC, and Ford cars of the time, it had a proportioning valve in there too.

I meant a height-sensing proportioning valve. It attaches to the rear axle, and senses when its being unloaded during strong braking, and reduces brake pressure to the rear wheels accordingly, eliminating rear wheel lock up. There was one on my Peugeot 404, and a number of European brands had them. And I’ve read where US magazine reviewers criticized US makers for not having them, as rear wheel brake lock-up was a serious and common problem.

And some U.S. cars with disc/drum brakes did have such a device — the 1965+ Thunderbird and Lincoln Continental did, which vastly improved their stopping performance, probably almost as much as the discs did.

Citroens use the proportioning valve for a different effect the more weight my car has in it the more braking force on the rear wheels effectively pulling the entire car down during a hard stop, A mate of mine has a Xantia and with four wheel discs the strongest set two piston calipers are on the back giving the same braking effect, though of course the Xantia brake system is the absolute reverse of regular master cylinder brakes and are similar to air brakes used on heavy trucks and very very effective.

First discussion I have read in a long time taking having a negative viewpoint on the Toronado. It was a large, personal luxury “niche” car, but I rememeber that it brought new engineering and excitement to the US market (a US market made up of mostly bigger cars, and therefore another big car was created). It was audacious to put FWD in a large car, but Olds did it and created a very reliable drivetrain. It does have that truly American stance/look of the 1960s POWER (love it or hate it), whereas the Jensen has a very European/British style.

Its failings were the drum brakes, but reviews in the 60s condemn most braking systems, even on ’65 Buick Skylarks and Ford Mustangs with drum brakes (“smaller” American cars). I recall reading that the A-Body GM cars, the early Mustangs and mid-sized cars were listed in magazines as having poor braking performance with “great acceleration”.

I would love to see photographs of a less forelorn Toronado in Oregon; one that has not been neglected. Have any survivied in the land that never rusts? As you mention, the 1966-67 Toronados were considered milestones in the development of reliable front wheel drive for the American market.

There were a lot of Oldsmobiles in my life when growing up. The Toro was considered kind of exotic then. I liked the look – it didn’t look like all of the other boring Oldsmobiles.

My sixth grade teacher was an Oldsmobile guy and had one of these (along with a 64 Dynamic 88 that he traded for a new 72 Delta 88 during the year I was in his class. It just seemed wrong – a teacher with one of those cool, exotic Toronados.

In retrospect, the car’s biggest failing in its market segment was that flat floor. The Thunderbird had taken the console and created a new world inside. Not so the Toro.

Of all of the GM Hubris-Mobiles (Corvair, F-85, Tempest, etc) the Toronado turned out to be the best in real life. I do not remember any real weaknesses in the drivetrain, and the worst part was simply the weight distribution that was sort of inherant in the design. I could be convinced that a 66 Toro is worth owning someday.

It seems GM was thinking outside of the box on this one. Their major sin seems to be the lack of looking at what others had done before them. I always thought this car was great looking. I have talked to a couple of owners and they all loved the cars and wish they still had them.

I find mine to be quite a catch. Our original ’66 saved a life due to its outstanding handling, manueverablitiy and speed in 1968. Drive one today, and you’ll see it behaves like a much smaller car, and those front fenders and “long hood” can be viewed as an American automotive art form from the 60s.

My Citroen SM was similar in concept to the early Toronado, but in the States it was a much less reliable car. The Citroen became a true Deadly Sin, no matter how incredible it was as a automotive creation. Despite being a smaller, European car, we returned to an older Toronado for its reliability and handling.

I recall that the Toronado’s length was the same as our Ford Galaxie, it was much lower and aerodynamic than the Ford (only the Corvette, Corvair, and Mustang were lower back in the day), and it fit six of us easily. Handling was and is quick and easy for a large car, and braking could be its only “Deadly Sin” because its GM of America’s heritage at that time.

Call the owner of the car behind the gate and ask him to let you drive it on the open highway!

I was a little kid when these cars were introduced. My mother worked for a man who’s company supplied GM (I, too worked for that company when I was in my 20’s), and an acquaintance of his had a then-current Eldo. This might have been in 1971 or so.

It was a revelation to see a big car with no ‘hump’ running through the middle of it. (Oddly enough, I don’t have the same recollections of my sister’s Corvairs, although I know the 1964 was a Monza.) It just seemed to have all of that… space! The Eldo was a pretty big car (by then my father had downsized to mid sized Mercurys), but wow! There was a lot of room up there.

“the Toronado’s fwd technology was soon put to good use in that highly space-efficient and practical import killer, the fwd Vega”

Between this (yes I recognise satire!) and the long list of drivetrain layouts, did they look at transverse engines at all? Is there somewhere on the web we can see what else they tried like the Universelle van above?

That ’66 WAS my father’s Oldsmobile, right down to the gold paint and white interior. I liked the styling then and still do. Yes, the whole concept of a giant, heavy “personal” luxury coupe was absurd, the C-body Coupe deVille was actually worse in mass and proportions. By the 1960’s, Olds had an identity crisis, equal to Buick in all respects except prestige. Low volume engineering exercises like the turbocharged Jetfire and FWD Toronado were an attempt to bring back the glory days of the original Hydramatic and Rocket V-8. The gap between Pontiac and Buick had become way too small. Olds was doomed to DeSoto’s fate if they didnt do something to stand out.

Maybe I caught this one a little late to get follow up comments, but I always wondered what made the exhaust sound of these Olds engines so unique?

Was it early exhaust valve opening? Certain type of exhaust pipe? Exhaust manifold design? Muffler tuning? Firing order is common: 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. Its more than a rumble its a certain complete sound, and almost does sound like relatively early exhaust valve opening.

Does anyone have some insight on this? It certainly pervades a lot of the ’60s Olds models, almost seems by design.

In the 1979 I bought a clean, but very high-mileage ’68 Cadillac Eldorado, which mechanically, was a near
clone and under-the-skin stable-mate of the first -generation Olds Toronado. The Eldo was loaded, looked good and was in decent shape other than it having gone about 160,000 miles – and the fact that the original rubber CV joint boots had disintegrated a long time before – and with continued use by an unknowing and/or uncaring previous owner, the CV joints had ingested road grit, chewing them up and destroying them. Because of this and the high mileage, I only paid 400 dollars for the car – and not knowing anything about CV joints back then – and wrongly assuming they were no different and no more expensive that regular universal joints. I figured I had scored a deal. Until I went to the local GM dealer and tried to buy 4 new CV joints and 4 new rubber boots for them. Even though this was back in 1979, I still remember the price – even with the shop discount that the dealer always gave me – the CV joints were almost 350 dollars a piece – times 4 – and the rubber boots were an additional 90 dollars a piece – times 4!. At the time, a typical, decent condition ’68-’69-’70 Caddy Eldorado – but with with more reasonable mileage showing on the clock, could be be bought wholesale for between 1400 and 1800 dollars, or just about the same as just the CV joints and boots for my very high-mileage Eldo would have cost! I ended up cutting my losses and parted the car out, probably nearly, but not quite breaking even on it.

To me, the Toronado was more attractive than the Riviera which had a heavier look in ’66. However, the ’68-’69 Riviera styling was cleaned-up quite a bit and much more attractive than the Rivi of ’66-’67, and didn’t quite have that heavy look anymore (IMO).

I think the author missed some valid advantages the Toronado possessed and has dismissed it as a ‘what was the point’ failure –

Obviously, the Toronado was much more efficient at putting power to the ground than its contemporary rivals. Just like all-wheel-drive is now a common luxury and safety feature that owners will brag about, it seems to me that buyers of personal luxury coupes back in the day were of course interested in having prodigious power but not in spinning tires whenever that power was called upon, especially in less than ideal traction situations. Although the Toronado was still capable of “burning rubber” if really desired, it was more difficult to lose traction than it was in say, the Riviera. In a low-traction situation, the Toronado would rocket away more gracefully and leave the Riviera behind for a few seconds… in some of the road tests writers remarked about this advantage – not just in snow but in rain and on sandy roads too. In strong side winds, the Toronado also tracked better.

The flat floors were very comfortable and worth deeming a ‘luxury’ feature advantage. Also, nobody ever seems to note how limited and small the Riviera’s trunk space was compared to the Toronado’s. And yet another advantage never noted is the Toronado’s interior benefited from less drivetrain noise and heat.

As Jiro commented, the weight balance fore and aft was about the same (maybe just a tad more forward biased) as any conventional full-size American car of the period. The RWD cars of the day tended to under-steer quite heavily in aggressive maneuvering, while the Toronado could be pulled-through corners if the gas pedal were let-off slightly and then reapplied. Although handling was still a black art back then, the Toronado does seem to handle better than the Riviera or other full-size RWD cars – my experience is I’ve owned a ’67 Riviera and still own a ’66 and ’69 Toronado. My father purchased a brand-new ’69 Riviera back in the day. The only real let-down with the Toronado is it is not possible to ‘drift’ through corners (letting the stern out), which I like to do sometimes for fun. Interestingly, the Toronado’s weight balance was very close to 50/50 when six passengers were aboard.

In conclusion to my drawn-out opinions;

Although I have pointed out some advantages the Toronado possessed, I feel the real distinction is in the styling and don’t really care for FWD in any car. I would rather have a RWD Toronado like Jay Leno’s (but with a manual transmission instead) just because I like the way RWD cars behave while driving aggressively. It’s easy for me to understand why Jay converted his to RWD (I actually contemplated converting my Toronado to RWD long before Jay did his… and I don’t think it’s a bad thing as there are plenty of fine original examples of Toronados in private collections and museums).

It’s false to said gm engineering didn’t ever consider a fwd small car but you are right on both schedules: 1/ for a long time, gm didn’t enable their engineers to develop some new technologies. In fifties, they have given green light and with few reflexion about future trend, engineers tried all layout. 2/a fwd drivetrain for a small car should be a better solution than for a personal sport coupe like toronado. Early thirties, Oldsmobile experimented the fwd tech with a modified V8 Viking model 1931. Although, this experiment culminated in failure because the engine of these car was too mighty and the gearbox didn’t support this. In addition, the steering was heavy. At this point of the story, some gm’s enginneer figured out that they had two solutions: either develop a new costly gearbox or conceive a smallest car. In 1929, a project called “Research light car body” was launched by Charles F. Kettering. Most prototypes of light cars with innovative featuring were launched. Amongst of those, there were fwd light cars. I found on the http://www.moaaad.org/catalog_cat1d.php?pageNum_RScategory1=23&totalRows_RScategory1=54&decade=1940s a conceptual rendering with the”Microbe’s Maccuen” annotation. The moaaad.org show it like ” Cadet’s chevy”. Oddly, I’m not remember that charles maccuen have worked on the cadet. On the contrary, the Cadet was the “project” of earl macpherson. Futhermore, these drawings present an compact car (its dimensions are similar to opel kadett) whose motor space doesn’t seem very vast for the Cadet’s six cylinder! For me, it’s maybe one of these fwd car projects. Unfortunately, management always showed a great reluctance to put in production a few profitable light car and future fwd cars logically had to be a great car if gm’s engineer wanted to produce these new kind of technology! On this point of story, I think that charles leroy maccuen, the “boss” ket’s successor, have played a great part and was concerned by fwd cars.Later, Maccuen took the assignment of gm’s chief engineer. During his reign, gm set up the ” Unitized power package” program which led to Toronado. At this time, the advent of power steering and automatic transmission solved two major troubles of early fwd viking and avoid to invest in a new transmission.

I quite agree that they’re uniquely beautiful; I thought so since the day they came out. But spending the untold millions to make them FWD was a total waste of time and resources, which GM should have used to learn to make a proper small FWD car. Just another reflection of the many decisions that eventually destroyed GM.

In case you missed the memo, GM’s Deadly Sins are just that: chronicles of the many ways that GM destroyed itself, even though the cars themselves weren’t necessarily bad. Of course many were, soon enough.

If Olds wanted a luxury coupe, they should have just but some different skin on the Riviera and called it good.

We were a Corvair (3) family, so my parents admired the FWD Toronado in the same way we enjoyed the Rear/Rear set-up on the Corvairs, especially in snow. Hence, the Deadly Sin: WAY too expensive! A mainstream FWD model would’ve immortalized Oldsmobile. AMC got it right a year earlier : the Marlin had Front Discs STANDARD.

I don’t understand why this car was considered to be one of GM’s deadly sins considering they were great cars that were well engineered and many people seemed to like these cars, I do wish it had rear wheel drive instead of front wheel drive though.

I agree that this car was quite expensive for the GM ,
Somebody can get the unit investment cost.?
I mean the developpement cost plus the toolig cost divided by total production.
Did GM lost money on each unit sold ?

Expensive to develop, yes, but keep in mind what a colossus GM was at the time. This was the largest and most profitable company in the world. GM led global vehicle sales for 77 consecutive years from 1931 through 2007. In the late ’60’s they were at the height of their powers, producing over 7 million cars annually worldwide, employing 800,000 and earning annual profits well over $3 billion ($4 billion in 1965). Rounding errors were more significant than any loss on the Tornado. Even though a big, luxury FWD made little sense, GM built it because it could. Arrogance was never in short supply at GM, no more so than during this era.

What’s ironic is that GM’s indulgence was so often misplaced. It gave the OK to FWD research, but insisted it be on the Riviera platform, instead of a compact where FWD’s benefits would be better suited. Earlier it approved the Corvair, misreading its production cost as well as the market for such an unconventional car. These errors would begin to repeat with more frequency, with the poorly executed X cars, Vega, Cimarron, Saturn and others. However, with the arrival of Japanese competition, GM could no longer brush off these flops. By 2009 it was teetering on bankruptcy, eventually saved by the U.S. taxpayer.

GM’s insistence that the Toronado share its basic structure with the Riviera and upcoming Eldorado was based on cost concerns. GM wanted all three to share the same basic body structure to better amortize costs. This was despite the preference of both Oldsmobile and Bill Mitchell for a Toronado based on the smaller A-body.

GM wanted the Toronado’s drivetrain to be used on a personal luxury car because it was felt that these buyers would be more likely to place an importance on having the latest style and features, and thus be willing to pay extra for them.

GM’s view at that time was that small-car buyers were motivated mostly by the desire to save money. They thus were less likely to pay extra for a front-wheel-drive layout. This view wasn’t entirely without merit, as the dead-conventional Ford Falcon (and later, the Ford Mustang) had whipped the Chevrolet Corvair in sales. The thoroughly conventional 1962 Ford Fairlane beat the early Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac “senior” compacts in sales, despite the GM entries offering many interesting features – an aluminum V-8, a V-6, the Pontiac Tempest’s “rope drive” and transaxle, and even turbocharging on the Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if GM used front-wheel-drive on a personal luxury car instead of a family sedan or wagon because it wanted to avoid too many direct comparisons. If Oldsmobile hyped front-wheel-drive on the F-85/Cutlass family sedan and wagon, people might start to ask why the Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Ninety-Eight didn’t feature it, too, if it was so great.

Another thing is all the counterpoints to Paul going on about “the Toro is beautiful..” They totally ignore the drum brakes and other weak kneed items. Is all that matters is styling? Do any of them look underneath the ‘beauty’?

So many Boomers are obsessed with 60’s cars, since they ‘make them feel young’, but look at them with rose colored glasses, forgetting about them being accident prone and poor handlers/brakers.

There was no forgetting and looking through rose colored glasses in the article. The undersized and engineered brakes were addressed. The whole article was about what made the car a Deadly Sin.

Commenters, several who still own them, have had actual experience with them have only mentioned what they’ve experienced. No one is only remembering the styling and forgetting everything else but have been discussing the Toronado, it’s purpose and mis application of GM’s resources.

And they were hardly “accident prone”. Millions of people drove billions of miles in Baby Boomer Era cars and most of the cars were used up and junked not wrecked. And we survived.

Is looking at an era through the prism of “presentism” any different than using “rose colored glasses” [which no one actual did, even in the commentary]?

The testers criticizing the Toronado’s drum brakes (and the Cadillac Eldorado’s drum brakes the following year) were making those criticisms after worst-case scenario tests. If I recall correctly, testers took the cars up to 80 mph and literally slammed on the brakes at that speed. (That is what Car and Driver did with the 1967 Eldorado that earned a stinging rebuke from the testers.)

Granted, given the legal speeds of those days, that spelled bad news in certain situations – a high-speed panic stop, or even driving down a mountain (fade was also a big problem with those cars). But a fair number of people never encountered those scenarios, so they never really noticed any deficiencies in their Toronado’s brakes.

Given that the Toronado and Eldorado were presented as GM’s – and America’s – “best” with the “latest and greatest,” they should have had offered, at a minimum, power front-disc brakes as standard equipment. (In its test of the 1966 Buick Riviera, which had a rear-wheel-drive layout, Car and Driver still criticized the car’s drum brakes.)

But it wasn’t as though people were crashing their Toronados and Eldorados at an alarming rate in those days. The people with the money to buy these cars weren’t likely to drive recklessly or take chances behind the wheel. Young men in their late teens and early 20s were not buying brand-new Toronados and Eldorados. They didn’t have that kind of money, even during the “good old days.”

The drum-braked Eldorado and Toronado were particularly under-endowed in the stopping department, though, and worrying about whether you were going to have enough brake to stop was not limited to panic situations. The issue was not simply that they had drum brakes; it was a combination of various factors, including the tires and the weight distribution. The Riviera’s brakes weren’t great by modern standards, but the Riviera was lighter, less nose-heavy, and had better brake cooling. The maximum deceleration rates, while not in the class of a good set of discs, were significantly</me. better than those of the drum-braked UPP cars.

While there are a lot of good points made here, and I tend to agree with Paul’s conclusion, one thing I think that is unfair is complaining about the weight bias. Those of us who spend months on end driving in icy conditions appreciate the traction a 60% bias over the driving wheels affords. It may not be ideal for handling and performance, but it’s certainly more practical than the AWD systems today’s manufacturers use to make up for poor 2WD traction. People who don’t drive in those conditions on a regular basis tend to underestimate the importance of good traction.

Granted, this was not exactly a practical car to begin with. But it was also not a high-performance canyon carver. At the time I most likely would have seen that weight bias as a huge advantage in a year-round daily driver.

I would not at all mind one modified for the modern world, alas, not like Jay Leno did his – it’ll stay FWD but will have big disc brakes on all 4 corners, uprated springs and shocks etc. It would still make a continent eater but unlike the modern equivalents has style…

I seem to recall that when it was introduced, there was confusion about the name: why the extra “o” in “Tornado”? At the time most car names were either real words, or a few total fabrications, typically from GM also, like Chevelle or Corvair (Corvette + BelAir or air [cooled]). One other observation … compare the fender flares on the Toro with those on the current-minus-one generation of Subaru Outback. 45 years ahead of its time!

Toronado had been the name of a (IIRC) Chevrolet show car — a Tornado from Coronado? — and was already registered with the AMA. “Tornado” might have presented issues with Kaiser Jeep, which had registered that name for their OHC six.

Funny how we are all criticizing the Toronado’s FWD platform yet we are totally forgetting that it was the 60’s and 70’s we are talking about, not 2015. True, it could have been introduced on a cheaper, more mainstream vehicle. But to me the Toronado was the pioneer of FWD in America which for most automotive applications and consumer’s tastes seems to be the best setup. RWD has its advantages, but most people seem to like the extra traction from the pull of FWD vs. the push of RWD. AWD vehicles were not even available to consumers back then! Every car was RWD – look at pictures of the Blizzard of ’78 – New England highways came to a standstill because of all the RWD cars stuck on the roads. Living in New England I can attest to the fact that our ’72 Toronado was unstoppable in bad weather. While everyone was sliding and skidding about, we would be passing them with ease. Mom loved the comfort and assurance she got from that car. Maybe GM’s marketing should have been different, but I don’t know if I agree that the Toronado was truly a deadly sin. Maybe because I live in a snowy climate I look at it somewhat differently.

And to address Paul’s comment about GM using a smaller car for the new FWD platform, I couldn’t agree more. I’m guessing it was executive decision to make a sporty/luxurious FWD coupe with a platform they already had. Americans were into excess back then so small and economical probably wasn’t on their minds or the executive’s minds either – which it probably should have been!

The triad of E-bodies is interesting. I don’t think GM needed three Buick Riviera’s, even with three distinct body styles. Making the Toronado FWD made it into a different type of car. Sales for the Toronado were quite good at more than 40,000 the first year. Riviera’s sales had improved steadily from 1963 and were more than the Toronado’s. The RWD Eldorado sales were about 10% of the convertible sales, amounting to about 2000 or so. What I find quite interesting is that the FWD Eldorado sales jump almost by an order of magnitude to nearly 18,000 for 1967. Toronado sales drop almost in half. Riviera sales are off a bit too.

As time goes on, Toronado and Eldorado sales are nearly the same, while the Riviera sells better until we get to the boat tail Riviera. One can say that there seemed to be a market for the FWD cars. Why buyers were buying is not at all clear. The Eldorado sales are most curious. The 67 Eldorado is not much smaller than the 66 based on the DeVille body. A coupe DeVille is nearly the same size. So was it FWD? or perhaps the style? Who knows.

The Eldorado sold because it was Cadillac’s style leader, in the mode of the prewar Sixty Special. Comparing the sales of the Eldorado and Toronado is a little deceptive because the Eldorado was a substantially more expensive car than either the Toronado or Eldorado. A loaded Toronado might have run to around $7,000 plus local taxes, whereas the Eldorado was closer to $10,000 — a big jump in those days. So, even though the sales numbers were similar, Cadillac did very well on the Eldorado while Oldsmobile lost money on the Toronado.

The Toronado came in a base and deluxe models, which were more than the Riviera. The Eldorado was about $1000 more, probably $8000 with options. By 1971 nicely equipped Eldorado’s were $10,000.

I am sure Oldsmobile expected to sell about as many Toronado’s as Buick could sell Riviera’s. While this was so for the 1966 model year, the following years were not so good for Toronado. Since all three E-bodies are based on the same body, I am not sure how costs are distributed or profits are calculated. The FWD design was an Oldsmobile and Cadillac project, and the Riviera was required to become part of the E-body platform to reduce overall costs.

You’re right about the Eldorado — I looked it up and starting price in 1967 was $6,277, with a fully loaded example (as most likely were, or close to it) topping $8,000. A Toronado started in the $4,700 to $4,900 realm and with every available option might hit about $6,000. So, a spread of about $2,000, which was still a bundle of money at the time.

In those days, each division was responsible for its own P&L. From that, I assume that the development costs for shared components were allocated and any pieces the division didn’t actually make itself had to be purchased, even if the component was made by another GM division (e.g., the UPP planetary differential, which was made by Buick). That said, I wouldn’t assume a FWD Eldorado cost substantially more to build per unit than did a Toronado. The Eldorado did have somewhat more standard content than did the Toronado, but that was likely a small chunk of the $1,400-ish difference in MSRP between the Eldorado and Toronado Deluxe, so the profit margins were undoubtedly fatter.

I’ve always looked at the E-bodies as cars for those who wanted something a bit different and a little more youthful than the standard full-sized offerings. I remember when Mom’s ’72 Toro was about six years old my folks started looking at some different models to replace it with. The 98 Regency Coupe was high on the list because you could order it in brown with tan leather and Mom wanted leather. They were also very interested in a new ’78 Coupe deVille and because of a very pushy salesperson they came close to ordering one. I know my Mom liked it but still wasn’t convinced it was the car for her. My brother-in-law was working at a Buick dealer so they wanted to see if there was anything he had that would interest them. He showed them a new blue Park Avenue coupe in the showroom but Mom didn’t like the blue velour seats and wanted leather which I believe wasn’t yet an option on the Park Avenue. He then told my parents of the new ’79 Riviera that was coming out later that year. He told them it was FWD which was a huge selling point for Mom after having the Toro for almost seven years; then when my folks saw one they were sold.

You raise some good points in the article. The Toronado definetely had its flaws. However, without trying some of these ideas–even if they’re flawed–paints automakers into a corner as being staid and uninventive. For every idea that strikes out, there’s ones that thrive, and at that, some of the ideas that struck out did so because they were way ahead of their time, and needed some additional time to catch on. I’m not a FWD guy, but the criticism of the Toronado for being FWD……most cars nowadays are FWD. If the automakers didn’t perceive them as having value, they wouldn’t be making them that way. Olds/ GM learned the hard way about the wear and tear on steering the front tires with a heavy engine on top of it.

As far as the drum brakes, that no doubt was a cost cutting measure on a car that was already a bit of a risk.

The lack of disc brakes is unbelieveable really at a time when nearly every car out of the UK even underpowered 4 cylinder cars came with disc brakes as standard equipment, that cars that were this powerfull and heavy were so underbraked.

The argument that the 1966 Toronado was a turning point in General Motors’ mindset is a good one worthy of debate. The only real benefit to the FWD layout in this particular application (a full-size, personal luxury coupe) is that flat floor. But, man, it was ungodly expensive to get it, and only a car company the size of GM would have the wherewithal to do it with little regard to how it might impact the bottom line. Yeah, in 1962, they had over 50% of the domestic auto market, but that statistic always needs the asterisk of the 1962 Chrysler downsizing debacle. As Chrysler began recovering in subsequent years, so, too, did GM’s 50% market share figure decrease until it really began to tumble in the seventies and eighties after the Japanese got their foothold in the US market.

IOW, the hubris attitude of “we’re going to do anything, just because we can, due to our size” does seem to have begun in earnest with the Toronado and, using that rationale, I can go along with the Toronado being a GM Deadly Sin, and very near the top of the list, too.

To be honest, I think the issue the Toronado reveals is the opposite of that kind of hubris. What the story reveals is a lot of bright, talented, ambitious designers and engineers within a corporate structure with a deep-seated resistance to anything that rocked the boat.

Oldsmobile didn’t set out to create an impressive but basically pointless FWD personal luxury car — what Andy Watt and crew originally had in mind was a Senior Compact-size FWD family sedan with a V-6 engine or the small V-8, something very similar in concept and general size to a modern Accord/Camry/Malibu/Fusion/Mondeo. When there was a backlash about the high costs of the Y-body cars, Olds decided to work on a FWD Eighty-Eight instead. In a big family car (or, as I’ve said before, a big wagon like the Vista Cruiser), the UPP concept and flat floor would have made some practical sense. Whether it would have sold or not is a different question and would probably have depended a lot on price, but it would have at least been useful.

However, the corporation was more concerned with keeping costs down and eeking a few more dollars out of the Riviera shell, so the Toronado ended up not being exactly what anyone involved wanted, ending up as another example of a unique GM trait: being simultaneously elaborate and over-engineered and yet weirdly ambivalent. So, it lost money and didn’t even really serve as a proof-of-concept, since by the time everything had shaken out, a lot of the people involved had been promoted or moved on.

Whatever Frederic Donner may have said about it, the ultimate message of cars like the Toronado was not “We can do anything because we’re huge and powerful,” but rather “We could do anything, but we don’t really want to because have you seen these numbers?” Which is still certainly a Deadly Sin of some kind, but I don’t know that hubris is the right word for it.

I largely agree with you, and I wrote this piece tongue in cheek, obviously. But nevertheless, the decision to greenlight the FWD program in the Toronado is…dubious, and smacks of the kind of thinking that got GM into trouble.

It made sense, in a way, but only by a very narrow and myopic logic — the logic of someone who buys the extra jumbo package of something they don’t really need because the jumbo version has the lowest cost per ounce.

It’s certainly indicative of a particular problem that often seems to occur in the very wealthy: a really skewed sense of value that leads you to lavishly overspend on certain things while begrudging every penny spent on others, often in ways that (to the eyes of a poor or merely middle-class person, anyway) seem completely nonsensical.

Going along with that, I suppose, was a willingness to casually throw away (or really under-utilize) things that other people would consider valuable. The UPP was a really clever idea, and I can’t help thinking that a company like AMC would have put a lot of energy into developing specific products around it. As close as GM came to that was the GMC Motorhome.

la673

Posted October 30, 2015 at 4:36 AM

The Toronado was such a frustrating car for all the reasons noted here and many others. I coundn’t have had a better perspective of this as a kid because I was the youngest and smallest in our 5-person family, so guess who always got to sit in the middle of the back seat, legs straddling the driveshaft hump? But occasionally my dad would borrow his brother’s car – a Citroen DS wagon, and my legs could stretch out comfortably on that wonderful flat floor (when I wasn’t in the way-back center-facing rear seats which our usual big Dodge wagon didn’t have). I became a FWD fanboy at the age of 8. But the Citroen was too narrow and too funky to be a mainstream family car, and they’d just been forced out of the US market.

The Toro had such advanced, ahead-of-its-time engineering – by the mid-’70s the FWD and flat floor had been joined by dual air bags, anti-lock brakes, and high-mount brake lights. And all of these were largely wasted on a personal-luxury coupe whose buyers didn’t care much about any of those things. Why, why, why didn’t they use this platform for a four-door sedan and wagon where that flat floor and width would have made for an awesome family car with great 6-passenger seating, back when that mattered because minivans and 3-row crossover SUVs weren’t a thing yet? An 88 or 98 sedan, or especially a Vista Cruiser or Custom Cruiser with a wide, flat floor and great bad-weather traction would have been a huge leap over anything else available in the late ’60s and ’70s. Instead, the airbags and (rear wheel only) ABS options were soft-pedaled, and the huge width and flat floor front and back were wasted on a coupe that rarely carried no more than two people (though two imaginative people could put all those wide flat spaces to good use), and it didn’t have much rear-seat legroom for a car its size. The downsized ’79 started to make more sense, though it still was available only with two wide doors and the narrower body made the center seating positions less comfortable than before. The ’80 Seville finally put four doors on this platform – it would have been a great car if not for that ugly (and space-stealing) bustleback trunk (at least for its first two years when the big-block Caddy V8 was still available).

I had not realized that GM had Oldsmobile working on an experimental project which they turned into a FWD project for the compact cars. The project was to experiment with new ideas. This started about 1958 or 59. In the mean time, the styling department came up with what was to become the Buick Riviera. This was first offered to Cadillac, who did not want it then. Buick had some ideas about a new car, but the Riviera project was probably offered to all of GM’s divisions for proposals. Buick probably had the best developed plan as they were already thinking about it and got the project.

Oldsmobile wanted something similar, and proposed a FWD version. Cadillac joined this proposal. At this point the previous FWD experiment becomes a development project with a production car the end result. The earlier experimental costs should not be charged off to the Toronado. Obviously there is a group at Oldsmobile pushing for FWD.

The plans for a Toronado and Eldorado create the need for a body, designated the E-body, which the Riviera would have to also move to. So beginning with 1966 the Toronado and Riviera are E-bodies, along with the 67 Eldorado. This generation is in production until the 1971 redesign. Total production numbers are 90,000 Eldorado’s, 125,000 Toronado’s, and about 225,000 Riviera’s. About 450,000 E-bodies altogether (perhaps more). GM’s revenues are at least $3,000 to $4,000 each. Probably about 1.5 Billion total or more. Somehow I think that there must have been some profit in there. Otherwise would they have gone ahead with the 1971 redesign? Keeping the Riviera in the E-body line was probably seen as necessary to keep the overall costs in line.

I also think that most buyers of the Toronado and Eldorado were aware of the FWD, although that may not have been the primary reason to buy.

On the revenues, what you’re describing is not how GM calculated profit and loss. With joint projects, development costs might be allocated, but each division had to calculate its own P&L based on its own costs and expenses (which included buying stuff built by other divisions, such as the UPP planetary differential). So, the first-generation Eldorado certainly made money, the first-generation Toronado likely did not. In any functional sense, the profits from one didn’t offset the losses from others. (In the overall corporate ledger, they sort of did, but not individually; the corporation tallied up the P&L from the various divisions to create the overall balance sheet.)

Oldsmobile’s early FWD experiments were done by the division’s own advanced engineering department, not by the Engineering Staff. The Engineering Staff also did FWD work, some of which involved Cadillacs as test mules, but Cadillac’s interest overall was fairly limited. The designers really liked the idea, a few of the engineers were interested, but the division management apparently was not.

In this era, Engineering Central Staff projects were separate and distinct from divisional R&D. Sometimes the Central Staff would come up with something cool that the divisions would either decide or be assigned to share, but the divisions also did a fair amount of their own internal R&D stuff. The early Olds FWD experiments fell into the latter category. Their head of advanced, Andrew Watt, was very interested in FWD for family cars.

I am going to assume that you have more information than I do about GM’s costs and how they charged them to various projects. Once the E-bodies were in production the cost of putting them into production is somewhat irrelevant. The real question is what to do about a second generation. If the FWD’s had not been profitable the 1971 redesign would not have taken place. The basic Toronado FWD was used until the 1986 transaxle design, so Oldsmobile did have 20 years to pay off the original cost.

Well, each division had a budget for advanced engineering and R&D, so Oldsmobile’s early experiments wouldn’t necessarily have been charged against the production Toronado in any case. And the development costs of the initial production model (and the Eldorado) were shared between Olds, Buick, and Cadillac — each was assigned certain development responsibilities, so no one had to eat the whole design cost. I don’t doubt that GM got its money’s worth overall on the actual UPP drivetrain, although how it actually looked on the balance sheet is another matter.

SomeOneInTheWildWest

Posted October 31, 2015 at 8:23 PM

At the end of the year the whole company reports either a profit or a loss. Oldsmobile was terminated because they supposedly were not doing as well as top management wanted. Sales were about equal to Buick, but Buick was using a few platforms, while Oldsmobile had several.

Many cars end up being a victim of timing, and what the public wants to buy and what the current market trends want. The first cars with seatbelts and other safety features, didn’t sell particularly well, for example. Styling and overall aura usually tend to sell cars much better than technical specifications can.

In terms of Deadly Sins, sometimes it’s pure hindsight that reveals them. The 1953 Corvette was an underpowered, underwhelming sports car when it came out, and it was throughly lambasted for the Blue Flame six and other GM parts bin scrounging, instead of having its own dedicated parts. To me, it easily could have been axed after 1953, if we’re looking at the sheer numbers (or lack thereof)…..especially considering that when the T-Bird came out in ’55, they had improved on the Corvette’s flaws and had well outsold the Corvette. But thankfully GM and Bill Mitchell and Harley Earl stuck with it and fought for what it represented, and what it could eventually be.

Ultimately, it’s the niche oriented cars that don’t sell well that usually are missing links of sorts that bridge the gap between the corporate bean counters, and the really innovative car guys that are within their ranks. Profitability usually tends to compromise the overall vision.

I fixed up one just like this in my body shop – same color (harvest gold I think) and same rust situation. My estimator wrote the job and booked it unbeknownst to me, so you can imagine my surprise when it was dropped off on a December Friday just before a snowstorm. I should have refused the job but I was dumb. That thing took us until Memorial Day and I lost money on it. But driving it out of the shop, I wanted one.

Nobody mentions the stopping power of the disc brake 1970 toronado, I own one and it is incredibly impressive…and to make use of that extra floor space, owners could opt for no cost bucket seats, add $18 for the floor console it the interior befits a true performance car. Want performance? Spend another $53 for the W-34 option and enjoy 400 factory HP…now criticize?

If “should the car have ever been built?” is the premise for the Deadly Sin, I can’t agree to DS status.

It seems commendable that GM was willing to experiment, and other than brakes, came up with a decently reliable and exotic American luxury car for the times – that was its mission, not space efficiency or economy.

It missed the mark from a marketing standpoint – Oldsmobile built nice cars for sensible people. Not preening luxury cars. But, GM had just the solution, and recycled this as the Cadillac Eldorado for ’67. The Eldo held its own in the premium luxury coupe wars in the ’70s, undoubtedly some buyers probably didn’t know it was FWD, but some undoubtedly wanted this “exotic” feature.

The side effect for some GM loyalists was that this began to make FWD seem normal, and like a luxury feature trickling down to more plebian offerings. And, it even became a practical feature in the downsized ’79 E- bodies where interior space was becoming an issue.

The real Sin where the wheels came off FWD at GM was its execution from 1980 and up – unreliable X cars, excessive downsizing, etc., etc. – you know, the stuff that GM botched through the ’80s.

The ’66 Toronado is one of my favorite cars, so I’m not about to label it as a Deadly Sin… but:

It’s interesting that in 1966-70, the RWD Riviera outsold the FWD Toronados and Eldorados combined. Even in 1966, when the Toronado achieved a healthy 41,000 sales due to its newness and novelty, the Riviera still beat it with 45,000 sales. I think GM learned from that experience that in the personal luxury market, design/style counted for more than technological innovation, and that FWD by itself wasn’t a selling point for big cars. Unfortunately, GM interpreted that as a reason to stop innovating.

Just spent a fair bit of time (slow day at work) reading all the preceding correspondence, and I’m left with the feeling that we’re missing one important thought in the development of the Toronado: The rationale. Yeah, it’s been discussed, usually to the negative (it should have been done on a small car, etc.), but that’s cheap and easy given all the five decades of hindsight.

Drop what we know now and go back fifty years. Or a bit more, let’s go back to the 1962-ish beginning of the idea.

At the time of the Toronado’s development, there had been exactly two post WWI automobile brands that had reached the market place with front wheel drive. The Cord (L29, 810, 812) and the Ruxton.

Both brands were expensive, flashy automobiles; marketed to well-off motorists who wanted to be seen driving something different. Fast forward thirty years and, in America, that’s still the impetus for front wheel drive. A different play toy for men of means.

Yeah, Europeans were messing with FWD in small cars. But the accepted standards for small cars were either front engine/rear wheel drive, or rear engine/rear wheel drive. The Mini had only been out three or four years, and I doubt if there were more than 100 of them in America at the time. 2CV’s were probably rarer, Ford Cardinal’s never came over here.

And the Cord almost made it. It was one of the last of the independents to die prior to WWII, despite being done on a shoestring and the cars were revered by collectors in the years just post WWII. I’ve had oldsters tell me flat out that the American antique car hobby was founded on the twin pillars of Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg and Ford Models T and A.

So it made a lot of sense for GM to follow the Cord marketing model when they were coming up with this new car. Just think, another Cord, but with enough funding behind it to not have to scrimp and save to develop the car, and enough resources to take care of any early teething problems (early Cord 810’s were notorious for overheating and the transmission popping out of gear).

The brakes? Yeah, not a good move. But a normal move for the time. Disc brakes were coming on, but it was still the 70’s before they became all-pervasive.

They’re a lot easier to understand if we can just shut down all that cheap hindsight.

You make some very interesting points here. There is no question that many styling details of the 66 Toronado paid homage to the Cord, which gives some credence to the idea that the idea was to be an expensive modern take on that part of the market.

While most of the DS are clear-cut, there are a few that are not quite so definitive and worthy of some discourse. This is one of them. It should be noted that, while not a home run success, the Toronado sold well enough to keep it in production for a very long time and, eventually, the Riviera would join the Toro and Eldorado with the FWD platform, rather than the other way around.

It was a huge expenditure without much short-term profit, quite a rarity for GM. But in the long run, the Toronado really wasn’t all that bad. In the context of being a latter-day Cord, it even makes some sense.

One thing that’s always kind of baffled me was why GM never put a Toronado convertible into production. Imagine how cool a 1966 Toronado convertible would have been (or any sixties’ Riviera).

Er… no. By the early ’60s, Europe was making many FWD small cars: BMC, Citroen, Panhard, Renault, DKW, Lloyd, Wartburg, Saab and FSO to name the larger automakers. By the ’60s, very few new rear-engine designs appeared. Legacy designs (VW, Renault, NSU, Fiat) outnumbered the new ones (Skoda, Simca, Hillman) by a long shot. Same for FR layouts in that segment. FWD was clearly becoming the norm.

And FWD was not just limited to smaller cars (1200cc or less). from WW2 to 1965, Citroen, Jowett, Hotchkiss, BMC, Lancia, Autobianchi, Triumph and Renault (as well as Peugeot vans) made FWD cars in the middle-to-big car segments, in terms of European size.

So for GM to “follow Cord” did not make that much sense, really. There were literally millions of FWD cars of all sizes on the other side of the pond. GM could have done what Ford did and made a FWD Opel or Vauxhall, to try their hand at the new way of making small cars. Instead, they created the largest and heaviest FWD cars in history, which was an answer to a question nobody asked.

And when the time came to make a smaller FWD for the US market, they made the Citation! Chrysler, OTOH, got the Horizon out of its European mess. GM made pointless FWD cars, then made FWD lemons. Deadly Sin fully deserved.

And, the purpose of the car following Cord for inspiration was to create a luxury car with an engineering twist. There was no goal at the time to create a FWD Opel or Vauxhall.

I’d agree that GM probably should have set its sights on a popular price FWD car in 1970 instead of 1980, but if one is to criticize the FWD E-body for this failure, one may as well criticize GM’s Electro-Motive division for the same failure. The issues have nothing to do with each other.

How is the FWD Toronado anymore pointless than a convertible, a muscle car, or an oversize and overly complex luxury car? Or a luxury truck or SUV?

The Toronado was pointless because putting FWD in that type of car was a waste of engineering. Maybe, once a good FWD platform is produced, a personal luxury coupe can be derived from it (e.g. the Citroen SM). But to limit that technology to huge two-door cars for over a decade makes no sense. A flat floor is far more useful in a smaller family-oriented 4-door (e.g. Ford Taunus) than a personal luxury coupe.

Convertibles, muscle cars, SUVs and luxobarges are not pointless. People want them — which is not to say they need them, but there is a market for these cars. Who wanted the Toro because it was FWD? Folks who bought these in 1966 wanted a personal luxury coupe and thought the Toronado was a good-looking car, which it is. Who cares about an “engineering twist”? FWD in the Olds was demoted to a gadget, like cruise control or power seats.

AMC, Ford and Chrysler did personal luxury coupes as well in the ’60s and ’70s. Did they go FWD? No, because that would have been (say it with me) POINTLESS.

On a different use for that UPP. There was a story in one of those Peterson publishing company (Hot Rod mags parent company) Engine Swapping Specials, about a guy who transplanted it into a old 912 Porsche with a blown motor. The owner reported it was better in all aspects and even the fuel economy was pretty good. Probably not going to be done again, but as a mid-engined configuration probably not bad. I suppose that you could use the post ’79 V6 drivetrain in an old VW bug chassis and make a ridiculous car. Maybe a Corvair, old Mustang coupe, Falcon or what have you. Maybe not.

Oldsmobile did in fact experiment with FWD in the compact chassis for the early 1960’s Y-body senior compact. Apparently John Beltz, an engineer, had a fascination with FWD and with the help of colleagues was rallying to use it in a production car. Initially, there was serious consideration to making the Y-body Olds a FWD car. In fact the effort progressed to the point that a running prototype with a transverse aluminium V6 and a chain driven transmission was developed. Ultimately though the cost was too high for a low priced car, so Olds reverted to the conventional RWD drivetrain.

Beltz also pushed to make the XP-784 FWD, which was supposed to be Olds’ personal car. Apparently Olds was sold on the FWD as it was seen as innovative and they wanted to continue the tradition of being the innovative GM divisions. The belief was that the FWD would also offer superior roadholding, but they really had no other reasons for making the car FWD.

David North stated in an interview that his sketch for a possible GTO replacement is what actually landed him at Olds. He made a scale model of it with a 50″ body section of a B-body with curved glass. Irv Rybicki thought his design looked more like an Olds than a Pontiac so he was transferred to Oldsmobile. The red rendering was based on this original GTO sketch, where he stated he made a full-size variation of the design theme on black paper for a more dramatic effect. Interestingly, North states that although Bill Mitchell lobbied to have the car as an A-body, he states that “I had cheated it [the rendering] so much that there wasn’t much A-body in it!” Although Mitchell seemed to push the A-body concept, it seemed North wasn’t bothered by the fact the car was going to be using the E-body.

In regards to the handling, in a C/D tested they stated that “During standard, every day operation the Toronado inspires more driver confidence than any American luxury car we can remember.” But they go on to comment that if you are driving in a hurry in the corners you better know what you are doing. In this case they were referencing the FWD cars tendency to increase understeer with more throttle. They summarize to say “We think a giant 400-hp, two and a half ton Mini is a gas, but have some reservations recommending it to citizens with cardiac conditions.”

There is no question the Toronado were initially underbraked, but the disc braked Toronados were still very prone to fade as well. In a C/D test they had one initial good stop. The second stop faded while the third stop was even worse. C/D commented that the initial stop was good, but were concerned about the very bad brake fade and the lack of directional stability on anything after the first stop.

This is an interesting and less known use of the UPP. Hurst did a conversion installing the front frame and powertrain of a Toronado into a 1968 Cutlass. The car still survives and has been recently restored. Here is one article on it: